Daisy Ridley's new thriller ‘Magpie’ “changed quite a lot” after she pitched her ideas to husband Tom Bateman.
The 32-year-old actress appears in the noir flick as lonely mother Anette - whose husband becomes infatuated by a famous movie star as he chaperones their young daughter on a film set - and now Ridley has revealed the project underwent major changes after she presented it to her partner, who she co-wrote the picture with, with Anette becoming the focal point of the plot.
Speaking to Dread Central, Ridley said: “It changed quite a lot. I had an initial idea about an actress infiltrating a family, and told Tom and we started developing it.
“And he just said he was much more drawn to Anette being the centre of the story. Once he made that decision I was like, ‘Sounds great!’ He just said the story sort of flowed out from there.”
The ‘Star Wars’ actress - who also produced ‘Magpie’ with Bateman - wanted the dark themes about the relationship between Anette and her husband Ben (Shazad Latif) to be distinct from her role as a parent.
She explained: “I feel like the fact that the marriage is difficult is separate to that fact that Anette is a mum. And one of the things I really wanted to make sure [we achieved] was nothing on-screen was happening because Anette … it’s not being driven by her children. It’s just that she has children.
“She has stayed in a marriage that is not happy, and because of concessions she’s made in that relationship, she doesn’t have that support system that might have made things easier.
“So it’s just one of those things, but certainly I always wanted to make sure that Anette is being a good mum.”
Ridley also wants ‘Magpie’ to spark “conversations” about people’s personal “feelings”.
She shared: “I hope that people will have conversations. The film really deals with perspective and our own feelings and the conversations we have had with people after screenings have been really interesting.
“And the way its resonating on various levels is quite amazing, so I would hope that people leave and feel inspired to have a conversation about how it made them feel.”
While she loved working with Bateman on ‘Magpie’, Ridley found it “very helpful” to not have her husband present on-set.
She previously told MovieWeb: “I think that [not having him there] was very helpful for me and to be honest that was precisely the moment where it ended up being really good, because otherwise I would've felt a little inhibited.
“He's come to set to watch me in other things but because of the nature of this role in particular, and it's all so personal anyway, particularly because he was able to watch the dailies and actually give feedback as someone who wasn't there.”
